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Rising heroin use threatens to bring more diseases

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week warned that large numbers of people using heroin and other intravenous drugs are already bringing an increase in Hepatitis C and may reverse progress made in lowering the rate of new HIV infections.

The disease risk with injectable drugs is because a large chunk of users share syringes with other people. The CDC says 43 percent of white intravenous drug users share syringes, and that number has been steady. About a third of Hispanics shared syringes, as did about a fifth of blacks; those rates have been dropping. Hispanics and blacks also have seen new diagnoses of HIV dropping. HIV rates among whites using injectable drugs have been steady, and the CDC warns those numbers could increase.

How much of a danger does the drug use bring? The CDC says about 0.3 percent of the American population had injected drugs in the last year, but injectable drugs accounted for about 9 percent of new HIV infections diagnosed in recent years. In other words, people using injectable drugs may be several dozen times more likely to get HIV.

The CDC offers a solution: “Access to comprehensive prevention services is essential for all [people who inject drugs]. Syringe services programs reduce syringe sharing and can help [users] access prevention and treatment services for HIV and other bloodborne diseases, such as hepatitis C and hepatitis B.”

Such public health measures can carry a hefty political cost, and some financial costs. As The Palm Beach Post reported in its Generation Heroin package,

“In Indiana, after roughly 200 people contracted HIV from sharing needles, conservative governor and Vice President-elect Mike Pence lifted a ban on needle exchanges in 2015 in affected counties. Many other cities give addicts clean syringes, too, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourages the programs.

In Florida, where Dade and Broward counties led the nation in new HIV cases in 2014, the Legislature this year allowed the University of Miami to establish a pilot needle-exchange program. But lawmakers refused to pay for it. And everywhere else in the state, including Palm Beach County, supplying addicts with clean syringes is still a third-degree felony.”

The CDC report said about five of every six new injectable drug users are injecting at least once a day. Some 27 percent primarily injected heroin, while 61 percent primarily injected heroin and other drugs. The Post’s review of heroin-related overdoses in 2015 found the powerful drug fentanyl is often involved. But even stronger drugs like carfentanil are turning up this year:

Twenty-one (21) carfentanil fatalities since July of this year. #carfentanil